Wool over eyes
I read your lead story this morning (Income hike report sparks furor, June 2) and I felt that I had to share this with you.
This spring, when I was planting, I was having some equipment problems. I read a paper with dealer ads and as I continued seeding I came to realize that, if I had to replace a major piece of equipment then, I could not continue farming.
To read that Statistics Canada doesn’t include depreciation in the calculations is very disturbing. It has been know for many years that farmers have been surviving on their depreciation. Whose eyes is Stats Canada trying to pull the blanket over?
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Kochia has become a significant problem for Prairie farmers
As you travel through southern Saskatchewan and Alberta, particularly in areas challenged by dry growing conditions, the magnitude of the kochia problem is easy to see.
– Stanley Gardon,
Radway, Alta.
Protect supply
To many city dwellers, the farmers are propped up and a drain on the economy. To them I say remember where food comes from.
Since the BSE crisis, the cost of production has exceeded returns and the agricultural industry is heavily in debt. Most available funds are going to repay loans. Operating loans are not available.
Despite $1 billion of government aid, individual farmers received little in comparison to their financial demands. Did it help fix the problem? No.
What will be the overall impact when family farms are gone and the means of production is owned by giant foreign corporations whose only concern is profits?
The collapse of the cattle industry would undoubtedly spell the demise of the family farm, the foundation of our rural communities. As reports of financial ruin begin to emerge, lending institutions are becoming increasingly nervous about agricultural related businesses.
It is time the government did what anthropologists claim is one of the main functions of a state – namely, to protect its food supply. Food is our most essential service, therefore the government must underwrite farm loans until this crisis ends.
The Great Depression illustrated the disastrous consequences of lenders withdrawing their resources when they were most needed.
If we, as ordinary citizens, fail to tell our governments and financial institutions that we want our food providers to be given the opportunity to ride out this storm, we will lose more than a few farmers. We will lose the way of life our soldiers have fought and died for. Time is running out. We must speak up now.
– Ethel Samis,
Edmonton, Alta.
Tax fury
By now Canadians will have received their income tax assessments. I’m wondering how many were as surprised as I was when I read mine. Although the Notice of Assessment acknowledged receipt of the total payable ($2,276.01) this apparently did not satisfy the tax centre.
I have always paid my income tax in one lump sum rather than using the cumbersome instalment plan and there have been no problems until this year. It continues:
“Our records indicate that you had to make instalment payments totalling $2,276.00 for the 2004 tax year. We charged you installment interest because at least one of your payments was insufficient or late.”
This is a blatant lie, since I haven’t used the instalment plan and the total payment was sent well in advance of the April 30 closing date.
I phoned my accountant, who seemed to be aware already of what was going on.
“You’ll have to pay it,” he told me. “They’re doing this to everybody.”
So even after we pay the full exorbitant amount, they extort some more – $182.42 they want from me, for no valid reason.
I suppose by now they’ll have squeezed several more millions from people like me, an elderly widow of modest means, which they’ll use to piddle away on themselves and their friends.
– Elsie Osbak,
Breton, Alta.
Gun laws
The visit of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip to the RCMP depot in Regina once again reminds us of the four slain officers at Mayerthorpe, Alta., in March of this year.
It was very honourable of the royal couple to honour the four fallen men and to meet in private with the families. The reminder of the officers also reminds us of the gun registry and Canada’s tough gun laws.
One might ask the question: has Canada’s tough gun control laws saved any lives? There is no evidence that even one life has been saved by gun control laws. It certainly did nothing for the four Mounties as the killer was prohibited from possessing firearms by Canada’s tough gun laws.
The Fraser Institute recently released a study paper entitled The Failed Experiment: Gun Control and Public Safety in Canada, Australia, England and Wales, which reveals that disarming the public has not reduced criminal violence in the countries studied.
After virtually total gun bans in England and Wales during the 1990s, the homicide rate jumped 50 percent and in 2003 alone, gun crime increased 35 percent.
After Australia enacted tough gun laws similar to Britain, violent crime has increased such as armed robberies at 166 percent. The study found that during 1995 to 2001, violent crime in Canada did not decrease, while it did decrease 25 percent in the United States.
The United Nations Inter-regional Crime and Justice Research Institute survey shows that England and Wales experience more crime per capita than 17 other developed nations including the U.S., Japan, France and Spain. Right behind England is Australia. …
Washington, D.C. has the toughest gun laws in the U.S. … Since the enactment of these tough laws, the crime rate has increased 72 percent, while the national rate fell 36 percent.
The U.S. capitol has the distinction of being the murder capitol of the U.S. for more than a decade.
The U.S. National Research Council, in a multi-year project, issued a new report on gun control laws. Dozens of gun control measures were studied but researchers were not able to identify any gun control law that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.
A gun ban recently enacted in the Solomon Islands not only benefits the criminals, but the crocodiles as well. More people are being killed by the crocs as no one has firearms to deal with them.
Do tough gun laws reduce crime and save lives? No.
– Don Budesheim,
Grande Prairie, Alta.
Tobacco fight
Re: Tobacco lobby says Ottawa’s support falls short (WP, May 5.)
I would like to know three things.
1. Why are tobacco farmers fighting for buyouts totalling $71 million out of the billions collected in tobacco taxes based on lies about second-hand smoke, which even without the better curing process announced in 2001, with reneged promises of support for it that remove a majority percentage of the alleged second-hand smoke health risk … instead of fighting for acceptance of 95 percent nitrosamine-free tobacco and the support promised for the safe smokes?
2. Is everyone so dumb as to not realize governments are not coughing up support for 95 percent safer smokes nor the $71 million for buyouts because somebody wants their farmland and is seeing to it that farmers go broke so they can buy it all cheaply at auction?
3. Why has everybody accepted that tobacco will be illegal within 10 years from 2005?
And one last additional question: has the whole world gone insane?
Strike that last question. The answer is yes.
– Steve Hartwell,
Toronto, Ont.
Gangsters stay
Well, the Liberals have done it again. With the help of the turncoat Belinda Stronach, the corruption train keeps rolling along to even more gangsterism.
The Ukraine showed the world last winter what you do when you have corruption in government. They gathered in the streets with their orange banners and stayed in the streets until the government stepped down and a new honest leadership took over.
What do Canadians do? They re-elect the same bunch of hoods. They were elected by Quebec and Ontario voters because this government spoon-feeds these provinces millions of hard-earned taxpayers’ dollars, so why wouldn’t they forgive their treachery?
The only way this farce is ever going to end is for western Canadians to separate from Eastern Canada at the Ontario-Manitoba border.
Otherwise we will be the doormats of Eastern Canada forever.
Western Canadians had better get some sand in our systems, and the sooner the better, if we ever want economic and moral freedom and actually have our vote count.
– Brian Vigar,
Lancer, Sask.
Turncoat
Belinda Stronach is a turncoat of the worst kind.
She played up to the Conservatives. She used Peter MacKay. She learned the secrets. She waited till zero hour and the battle lines were drawn. She crossed over to the other side.
Obviously she never had a real commitment to put a fraudulent party out of business. Obviously she never had any intention to change the way Canada is governed to make it fair for all.
Belinda Stronach has wrapped herself in a cloak of greed, corruption and fraud. She has, by her action, sanctioned the actions of a political party that cares more for power than it does for Canada.
She has become an accessory after the fact. She has sided with a party that has used every dirty trick in the book to remain in control of the finances of the nation. She has given her stamp of approval to Paul Martin, who has assumed the role of dictator by ignoring the time-honoured conventions of our nation, by overruling a lost vote in the House.
Belinda Stronach has given her approval to a man who has travelled far and wide, chequebook in hand, buying Canadian votes with their own money without a word of approval from Parliament. …
A recent emigrant from Russia said that he didn’t see much difference in the corruption in Russia and in Canada. The shameful thing is that in Canada, the people still have the power to vote out a corrupt government. They just don’t do it.
– John I. Fisher,
North Battleford, Sask.
Shout for help
It has been over five years since I drove my combine from near one side of Canada to the other. It was an effort, but supported by many farmers en route.
I told the position to the media, politicians and all, of the seriousness of the agriculture situation throughout this land. This was well before this political BSE nonsense and the arrival of the CAIS (Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization) program to supposedly help the farm income situation.
Wayne Easter has travelled across Canada recently to try and get answers to farming’s problems. It’s all talk, talk, talk.
All we farmers want is to be paid in a fair manner for what we produce – it’s real worth, not what we are dictated to take so food handlers can profit to the extent they wish and hold us primary producers to near ransom.
It’s downright degrading to apply to government programs to earn a living.
There are undoubtedly those that abuse the system at the expense of the genuine family farmer. All this has to stop if we are to have a sound agricultural future with younger farmers to take our place. If not, rural Canada is sunk, drained and pinched to the bone for good….
– Nick Parsons,
Farmington, B.C.
